Women's groups urge wider agenda

Pro-abortion rights women’s groups are urging female politicians to keep up the heat in the wake of their electoral success last week, and most importantly, not to make abortion the only issue on the table.

“We cannot get so focused on one issue that we lose sight of what motivation is for most women,” said Sen. Senator Claire McCaskill, who was reelected in part because her of opponent’s bizarre comments on rape and abortion.

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Speaking at an election post-mortem hosted by EMILY’s List, the Missouri Democrat joked that she was the senator that “brought you Todd Akin, so give me some love on that.” Akin alienated voters and the Republican establishments when he suggested a woman can’t get pregnant as a result of rape: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” he said.

McCaskill added that, although Akin became very well-known across the country because of his “backwards” beliefs, his comments had a much broader impact nationally because the controversy “crystallized for voters ….. the real contrast in so many elections.”

In the end, women’s rights groups attribute the high turnout and results of last week’s elections to a coordinated, multimillion dollar effort to weave together a targeted economic and reproductive rights message to independent female voters who came to see a Mitt Romney administration as threat.

Women this year made up 54 percent of the electorate and voted for Barack Obama by a margin of 18 percentage points. Obama also won 67 percent of unmarried women, who EMILY’s List says care about to access birth control, either though insurance or clinics.

WOMEN VOTE! operates as an independent expenditure arm for EMILY’s List, whose missions is to target and inform independent women voters and a get them to turn out for Democrats. Using a micro-targeting operation, Liston said they were able to “tailor the conversation in real-time based on what women were saying was important to them.” So, for example, they could email soccer Moms in Ohio with one issue, and single women in Denver about another issue.

“We started this campaign with a healthy fear of Citizens United and what the other side was going to be able to do,” she said. “We spent our resources early, and our objective was to make sure women and independents in particular knew where [candidates] stood on these issues.”

Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, said they were also helped in specific races because Republicans were slow out of the gate. Pointing to the contentious Wisconsin race between former Gov. Tommy Thompson and Rep. Tammy Baldwin, she said, “Karl Rove and American Crossroads left the race alone for 30 days…..It gave Tammy the ability to say who she was, what she was going to do, and that you had a better choice.”

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said that “Women make a mistake to think [separately] about economic issues and social issues. The $600 they are spending on birth control could be the cost of a down payment on a car.”

Threatened by Republican vows to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood, Laguens said the organization worked to raise public consciousness that it was not just an abortion clinic, but was about women’s preventive health and breast cancer screening.

Women, she said, felt “a sense of assault and a sense of empowerment which is the best recipe for turnout: Hope and fear.”

Readers' Comments (12)

Six hundred dollars on birth control? Having been a single parent with two daughters, I don't recall birth control being so exorbitant. I later worked for a county youth service organization and even Medicaid didn't charge that.; I might add that ALL the young women ( 13 to 17) were never without their prescriptions, although most of them believed that they were protected from STD's as well. Maybe some of that $600 should be allocated toward education as some girls don't have a parent who explains such stuff to them.

Photo Caption: ' Look, just because she's a Blonde Bombshell doesn't mean that all Blondes are Bombshells. As for the other comments coming from the intelligence department. We have no shortage of 4” Heels here and we have checked the local sources and there is plenty in stock. As for what's important for women, we all know it's like putting a marble in a jar, if we put one in we expect the other side to reciprocate. The problem is, usually they don't or at least in the way we want them to. Next Question ? '

What does McCaskill know about "Womens issues"? Emily's List and Claire McCaskill may know about liberal women's issues but all women are not democrats. Those who think they should be dealing with 30 year old issues are not the progressives they think they are. If women were not so dense, the knowledge and access to birth control that has been gained in those 30 years should have freed women from the bonds of male control. But we still have women who act like females of 30 years ago who do not appreciate the educational and workplace freedoms they have attained and remain subserviant to the male population. McCaskill is using politics to keep her in Washington and cares only about the women who are dense enough to keep her in power.

Six hundred dollars on birth control? Having been a single parent with two daughters, I don't recall birth control being so exorbitant. I later worked for a county youth service organization and even Medicaid didn't charge that.; I might add that ALL the young women ( 13 to 17) were never without their prescriptions, although most of them believed that they were protected from STD's as well. Maybe some of that $600 should be allocated toward education as some girls don't have a parent who explains such stuff to them.

Only in liberal looney land does birth control cost $600.00 a year, the liberals needed to inflate the price to try and justify the giveaway (Gift).

It is not requesting something for free to expect that women's prescriptions are covered by their health insurance plans just as men's prescriptions are covered. It is the disparity of treatment that irks me. If men's physician-prescribed meds are covered, my birth control pills should be covered. And my monthly co-pay is $30. Without the co-pay I could easily spend $600 per year for oral contraceptives.

The phrase pro-abortion is not correct.... it is PRO-CHOICE. I am pro-choice but I am certainly not pro-abortion. I do not know anyone who is pro-choice that actually "likes" the idea of abortion. Some of us just recognize that a woman has ownership of her own body and not the government, not religion and certainly not another person.

If women voters are so easily swayed by Democrats to vote their way based on a phony 'war on women' campaign that centers on trumped up fear about taking abortion rights away, why should the Dems bother bringing forth any other issues ? They had you at abortion.